


Old Gods

by ScriveSpinster



Series: Urchins in the High Wilderness [2]
Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, Sunless Skies
Genre: Ficlet, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 20:50:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18858862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScriveSpinster/pseuds/ScriveSpinster
Summary: The Storm That Speaks is not the Storm that Slivvy knows.





	Old Gods

The Storm That Speaks is not the Storm that Slivvy once knew, but it’s close enough, in its wrath and in its loneliness, that every slow minute of the _Sunchaser’s_ descent into the maelstrom brings with it a wave of familiarity. The deck tilts beneath his feet, and the hull rattles, buffeted by winds strong enough to shake a less sturdy locomotive apart. He’s looking at the ghost of a god, the remnant of a thing that had once been radiant. Power clings to it still, in a corona of tattered darkness and violet light.

Slivvy knows about gods. He knows what it’s like to speak, in a voice that seizes up like a recalcitrant engine, to something that has not yet decided whether you are worshipper or sacrifice. He knows what it feels like to be small and cold, at the mercy of the wind and prey to every creature greater than yourself. And on the edge of the vortex, with lightning dancing at the corners of his vision and the voices of Fisher Kings long gone calling him to come and play, he has the strangest sense that the Storm That Speaks knows it too. 

He suspects it might be more dangerous, that understanding, than any defiance. Lightning lashes the air, and thunder rages in the dark. Behind him, the crew trembles, standing close and whispering together in voices thick with fear. They had earned their god’s fury before he had ever stepped onto their vessel, but it would be poor repayment of their captain’s trust to incite it further.

He will not offer souls in appeasement – he is not that manner of priest, if he is any sort of priest at all – but there are other things that one can give to the dead and the divine. He gestures sharply for the skyfarers behind him to fall silent, and when they do, he steps forward, looking into the Storm’s black eye, and hums the first few notes of a simple tune.

Light sears the sky in front of him, and for a moment, his vision burns white, before the brilliance fades to afterimage and pain. He flinches, but doesn’t step back, and doesn’t let his song falter. There are no words to it; the Storm of the Neath is not here to fill his lungs and steal away his stutter, and these days, he speaks as often by signing as by sound. And it’s not a hymn, though he knows gods and their whims and ways; it’s a lullaby, and with it, a memory.

Time’s tides carry him back – to Albion’s early days, when his city was lit by false light and dreamed that it might be something new, and on to foxfire and gaslight, sigils and spires and secrets in the dark. He doesn’t fight against the pull, but dives in, lets the Storm take him. Years wash over him, months, days, seconds ticking inexorably backwards. The lightning strikes, and he is wounded, as Fisher Kings must be, and changed. The wind howls outside his window, and he is called.

Farther now, farther still, until he is half asleep in a place of warmth almost forgotten, with a blanket pulled up to his chin and his mother’s hand rocking the cradle as she sings the melody he’s humming now. Futures pile up around him, paths he might have taken and didn’t.

The wind howls. The lightning strikes. The Storm That Speaks fills his mind, and he offers it this: a moment of safety, lost to time, and the shadow cast by a life that never was.

He can feel the memory torn from the fabric of his past, the loose threads and the hole it leaves, and even then, forgetting what he’d given and knowing only that it’s gone, he isn’t sure the sacrifice will be accepted. But when he returns to the present, or the present returns to him, the Storm is quieter. He can feel its regard, but not its wrath. He’s emptier than he had been, as he turns to the captain and the watching crew, but he’s also sure.

_It’s done,_ he signs, too tired to force the words out unwilling. _Take us home._

The captain translates, and they hasten to obey. And Slivvy watches the lightning for as long as he can, and listens to the thunder. The Storm That Speaks isn’t the Storm he knows, but still, somehow, he thinks he can hear a familiar song carried on the wind.


End file.
